Bears in Yosemite and Vegas or Bust

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Bears in Yosemite and Vegas or bust

Yosemite National Park was absolutely stunning, definitely worth seeing. Did some hiking and bear spotting, saw 3 bears walk across the trail less than 10 yards from me yesterday, amazing. They weren’t at all interested in me which was good as I didn't fancy fighting off 3 of them at once.

The hiking is pretty cool, did 2 long day hikes in the Park, views are amazing with the towering sides of the valley, Half dome looming over one end and the waterfalls streaming down the sides. Hiking out of the valley is fun as most of the routes are just switchback tracks up the almost sheer sides of the valley till you get near the top when you can traverse around or head away from the main valley.

Also went to a park with a grove of giant sequoia trees, now these trees are big and very old. Can’t remember stats off the top of my head but they are very impressive.

Had a very oddball guy in staying in our room one night - typical hick but talks to himself or anything that will listen. Also had an unhealthy knowledge of counterfeit money and thinks world war 3 has started!!

After Yosemite National Park I went to Las Vegas. Just truly out of this world, has to be seen to be believed, casinos with scaled down versions of the Eiffel tower and Arc de Triumph, a scaled down New York skyline, and just about every other mad idea you could have, such as 8 acre lakes with fountain shows, even had a ferrari dealership in the lobby of one hotel/casino. You just walk into the hotels and casinos and look around, even just the lobby’s and check in areas are amazingly decadent. Had a quick go on the slot machinea (well I was in Vegas) didn’t win though. Some people just sit there for hours and hours (or maybe days and days - hard to tell) pumping money into the machines.

From there the next stop was the Grand Canyon.

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Photos

El Capitan
Views of El Cap from trail up the other side of the valley.

the bear
there goes yogi!

north dome hike
one of the many cool views from the trail up to north dome

I said they were big trees
kinda hard to take a photo to really show the size of these trees...

Comments

[sally]

cocktails
forget the gambling and the bright lights, how were the cocktails Tim?